At the movies: Conan the Barbarian Woman in a weird, crazy and cute movie

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Wandering in the abyss, the hellhound Rainer tells the story of Conan’s six lives, forever killing his own future, through ages, myths and centuries. From childhood, a slave to Sanja and his barbaric horde, to the heights of cruelty at the gates of our world.

sexual fluid(s)

The fact that Bertrand Mandico’s films are distributed by UFO Distribution is both amusing and logical. Because the director is a real alien in the French cinematic landscape. Even if we are starting to recognize it more and more. He and his taste in genres (cinematic and sexual) that he likes to combine to better transcend them.

After several short films, it was turned into the feature film Les Garçons Sauvage. An allegory of transcendence shot in black and white as sublime and contrasting as Conan’s allegory, Robert E. A surprising and feminine re-reading of Howard’s fantasy novels, whose adaptations made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star in the early 80s.

There are no bulging muscles here. But the woman, the barbarian, played by six different actresses (including Krista Terrett). One heroine for each age, whose hellhound Rainer (the reincarnation of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s dog) tells us about life and death, each iteration of the character being killed by the other in a fatally fraught story.

Because love and death go hand in hand in the unclassifiable cinema of Bertrand Mandico. And if there is less nudity here than in the past, Conan is no less surprising, fascinating, disturbing, amusing, disgusting… sometimes in the same way that it calls up the spirits of David Cronenberg and the portier de nocturne, and that the fate of a character named Europe is connected to his film’s present connects.

The political aspect of Bertrand Mandico’s cinema is certainly not new, and the fact that actors play male characters (and vice versa) was one of the clearest proofs of this. But none of his films have resonated with our times as much as Conan.

Perhaps because the project was first conceived near the Amandier Theater (and filmed directly in the adjacent studio), during Covid. And perhaps it is from this uncertain situation for the culture that the pessimism of the feature film was born.

To me it is the height of barbarism to kill your youth

Freed from some of the overpowering metaphors of his previous works, perhaps more accessible (and controlled) and despite the warning against children under 12, Conan remains a raw work. Iconoclast. strange Enchanting. Where color breaks black and white like every flash of flashing violence.

A story that embraces the artificial side of its settings and professes its love for genres that are often looked down upon and confined to the B and Z series without holding its nose. And where fluids, a recurring motif in his filmography, mix as much as registers.

A cinema that leaves no one indifferent and can provoke real rejection because it refuses to stay in place. But this is exactly what delights his audience, who immerse themselves in the crazy visions that the filmmaker then offers them, who can make their eyes light up like glitter that often appears on the screen.

This time, the substance is even more relevant, and the fact that his character crosses eras allows him to finally speak to us and mock current artistic productions (and influencers) with an uncomfortable ending.

“To me it is the height of barbarism to kill your youth”– said Bertrand Mandico three colors in December 2020 to portray Conan during its pre-production.

Did he know at the time that this concern, in the form of a heartfelt cry, fit so closely with the context in which his film was screened for the first time, the Filmmakers’ Monday at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival? And what additional power will this give to this unclassifiable work, certain images of which haunt us after projection?